Cast Off, Uniform On

Caroline had her doctor's appointment this week.  We went into the appointment expecting her to get her pins out and then get a new cast for a few more weeks.  They took her old cast off and sent us for an x-ray.  After the x-ray, and back in the exam room, the doctor came in and announced her bones had totally healed.  Even he was surprised by the quickness of the healing.  He showed me the new x-rays and all the new bone growth as well as the lack of breaks.  We were shocked!  Caroline was very unhappy about it.  She really had her heart set on a light blue cast.  Plus, she really wanted the security that the cast afforded her.  So, an angry, upset Caroline sat on the exam table while the doctor pulled the pins out.  Every question he or the tech asked her after that was met by silence and glaring eyes.  They did wrap her elbow area to keep the pin holes clean, but it was only wrapped til the evening at which time she got a real bath.  (She wasn't happy about that either.)

As we walked to the car after the doctor's appointment, Caroline was so cautious and insecure about moving her arm.  I understood her timidity, but she was really freaking out about it.  She was having a very tough time with the whole thing.  I think it was mental exhaustion because that afternoon she took a two hour nap.

While she was sleeping, the boys got to work making her a celebratory cast-off cake.  They both helped with the cast portion, and Josiah takes credit for the "fingers."  (To the right is a smiley face with a heart below it.)

I don't know if growing new bone causes one to be hungry, but ever since Caroline broke her arm, she has been waking up the majority of nights.  Usually right in the middle of the night: 2:00/3:00 a.m.  She's always hungry.  One night this week, she had woken up at 1:00 a.m., ate, and then couldn't go back to sleep.  We read, we played, and finally we watched one of my TV shows, Call the Midwife.  Clearly about mothers giving birth, Caroline watched with a lot of interest.  Since that fateful night, she has asked an incredible number of questions about childbirth and all that it entails.  (Why was she screaming?  Does it hurt that much?  Why do you put your legs up?  Can a man look at your privates?!!? {male doctor} What is that string? {umbilical cord}  What does that do?  Why is the baby grey?  Why did the baby cry?) Nearly every conversation is finished with her conclusion, "I don't want to go through all that pain.  I'm going to adopt my kids."  Good for you.  There are many kids that need to be adopted.  Next time we are up in the middle of the night, we'll have to watch Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.  As the week has gone on, we've really been working on her range of motion.  She cannot yet touch her shoulder, nor fully straighten her arm.  We've seen a lot of improvement throughout the week, but she still has a ways to go.  She's been cooperative with that which has been helpful.

He LOVES his uniform.

Henry had a baseball practice this weekend and at the end they handed out their uniforms.  He is loving baseball.  They have their first game this week (actually they have three games this week!).  Their coach told them to just do their best because they're playing a "borderline select" team while Henry's team is made up of a lot of new players.  They have actually had so little field practice, that the game should be an interesting one to watch.  The fields have been too wet for a couple of practices, so they weren't allowed on them.  Hopefully Henry will take these games as a learning experience and not get too discouraged.  He's the type of kid that likes to perform well and can get very discouraged if he doesn't live up to his own expectations.

Today we celebrated Todd's birthday.  He requested tacos for dinner and pumpkin bread as his "cake."  The boys both helped with the cooking of the tacos.  Henry cut up the tomato, measured the taco seasonings, and stirred in into the meat.  Josiah shredded a ton of cheese.  At dinner, Henry refused to eat any cheese, because "Josiah licked the plate with the cheese."  Caroline wanted a grown-up job as well, but there were no more jobs requiring knives, which is what she really wanted.  All three did help put candles on Todd's cake.  They wanted to put as many candles as his age, but since we didn't want a loaf covered in melted wax, we opted for a much smaller number.

Josiah got to take advantage of Todd's birthday coupon from Smashburger and downed a free milkshake.

Josiah drew a very cool picture of Captain America.  He did it all from looking at a picture on the cover of one of Todd's old comics.

This coming week we get to go see the Houston Ballet (for free!) as well as cheer Henry on for his three (!!) baseball games.  We'll need to invest in lots of sunscreen and bug spray to make it through this season.

Henry at Bat

We took this week off from school.  It was a planned week off and a very much appreciated mental break.  I took the time to clean the house.  Todd got more than one text that said, "You won't recognize the [insert] room." and  "I've rearranged [insert room/closet].  Don't be mad."  There was a lot of closet swapping and organizing going on.  It was great.  It also proved that if we didn't homeschool, we would have the potential of keeping a very clean house.  But we do homeschool.  So we don't....

Since it rained every day this week, the kids did a lot of indoor activities.  We've had some old build-a-wooden-boat projects lying around so the kids got busy on those.  Josiah did many Muppet Show performances.  He also created an ode to Lowe's now defunct Build-and-Grow program by creating a Muppet Show Build-and-Grow.  Complete with instruction books.

Henry spent some time making miniature animals.  I thought it was origami at first, but it was mostly paper tearing and scrunching.  In the picture, the elephant is on the right and a guy on a motorcycle is on the left.  When he explained them, you could really see what they were, but without him here to tell it, you'll have to use your imagination.

Sadly, because of Tropical Storm Imelda, we missed going to see a free performance of Peter and the Wolf.  It was in downtown Houston at an outdoor theater.  They actually do their performances rain or shine since there is a small covered area.  However, being that it was a tropical storm with winds blowing the rain all around, we didn't chance it with Caroline's cast.  I was really disappointed, though, because I saw Peter and the Wolf as a kid and really loved it.  If she didn't have that cast, we would have made a memory of watching it in the rain.

For our side of town, Imelda was mostly just an annoyance.  We had some street flooding that you just had to wait out.  The further east you went, the worse it got.  In fact, they said that it was the 5th wettest day on record for the Houston area.  Bush Airport broke it's record of highest one-day rainfall that had previously been set during Hurricane Ike.  Todd's university closed early, which was sort of funny because no one could leave.  Where he works, the streets flood really easily.  One very bad consequence of Imelda was that nine barges broke loose during the storm, causing them to hit I-10 at the San Jacinto Bridge making the bridge impassable.  This is the same I-10 that we take to get east each summer.  It's going to be a traffic nightmare for a number of months.

Currently our mail service has also stopped due to the storm causing the mail distribution center's roof to cave in.  So we are without mail.  That's exciting in a not-so-exciting way.  We're not sure what's going to happen with that.

Imelda also caused Henry's very first baseball practice to be cancelled.  This weekend he had a second practice, but the fields were still muddy, so they only did the batting cages.  In the emails explaining what the kids needed, they mentioned a glove, a uniform and hat, cleats, and it was suggested that they have their own bat and helmet.  Nearly 30 years ago when I played softball, the coaches always had a ton of helmets and bats that everyone shared.  I figured it would be the same.  Nope.  Every single kid brought their own bat and helmet to the batting cages.  Fortunately, one kid shared his with Henry so that he could get some practice.  He had the last five minutes of practice in the cage.  It was his first time hitting a real baseball with a metal bat.  He liked it.  Today, after church, Todd took him to buy him his own helmet, bat, and carrying bag.  He's ready for the next practice now!


The boys were able to go to a swim party on Saturday for some friends who are moving out of the area.  Caroline cursed her broken arm for missing a second swim party.  Todd brought her to a nearby furniture store that has much more than just furniture.  They had giant furniture that you could test out, train tracks, free water and candy.  They had a good time out together.


We spent today doing yard work.  Before Imelda, we were under a burn ban.  It had been hot and dry (still humid, just no rain) for weeks and weeks.  All the yards in the neighborhood had been turning brown.  Then we had Imelda and it rained for five days straight. For us, we had a wonderful steady, soaking rain, with only one day of "tropical storm" torrential rains.  So the grass is no longer brown and it grew inches upon inches in days.  Now we have a clean house (mostly), a fresh yard, and we're  ready to start a new week of school again. 

The School Report

In school news this week, Caroline has fallen in love with the Silent E rule: A Silent E makes the vowel say it's name.  So, 'hop' has a short 'o' sound, but if you add a Silent E at the end, it makes 'hope' with a long 'o' sound.  I always had her spell out the short three-letter word on her white board, then add the 'E' at the end to say the new word.  She kept asking for more words, which was really fun to see the gears cranking in her brain.  Now she wants me to just say the short-vowel word and she'll tell me the silent E/long-vowel word without writing anything down.  She loves it.  It has unlocked a ton of new words into her reading vocabulary, too.

Studious Caroline (Todd's glasses)

In Caroline's writing program this year, each week we read two short passages from a classic book.  For two of the days, I'll read a passage and then ask her questions about it (and the other days she writes, hence the writing program...).  This past week, we had a passage from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  The passage was about the Knave of Hearts on trial for stealing the plate of tarts.  In the question portion, I asked Caroline, "What was on the table in the very middle of the court?"  The answer was, the plate of tarts.  Caroline answered just as sure as she could be, "Poptarts."  Close.  Very close.

Many years ago when Josiah first started reading, I made him read aloud to me every day so I could make sure he was reading all the words and also comprehending the story he was reading.  Then as we moved on to reading chapter books, I always had him give me a recap of whatever he read for the same reasons - comprehension, fluency, and if he had any words he didn't know what they meant.  This kid has never had a problem with reading comprehension.  His recaps of the stories/chapters have always been so detailed it's almost like he's reading the actual pages of the book, but alas, he's not.  This week he started Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.  He naturally gives me recaps because he likes to talk and he loves telling a good story.  He was in the midst of retelling the first few chapters of Mrs. Frisby when he said that one of the mouse babies had 'puny-monia.'  It gave me a good chuckle.  Now he can file pneumonia away along with pterodactyl, psychic, and psychology.   

Josiah is his own little man.  For his CC presentation this week, he wanted to talk about the original Muppet Show.  Todd had him do some research about the history of it.  Then when Josiah gave us his practice presentation at home, he spoke about Jim Henson, sang the theme song, spoke a bit more, then finished it with singing 'The Rainbow Connection.'  Two songs was probably one too many for a short presentation.  He went with the theme song.  This kid loves to perform.  He loves an audience.


Caroline has gotten a lot stronger and is able to walk around without her sling now.  She says her cast is light now and she is behaving completely normally.  We're always having to tell her, "Don't run, you have a cast!" "Don't jump!" "Don't twirl and leap around like a ballerina."  At church today she was on the floor playing Twister.  She informed me, "I can't do the left arm ones."  You really shouldn't be doing the right arm/left leg/right leg ones either.   We have to protect her from herself now, and protect others from her.  She's banged up the boys a few times by smacking them in the face with her cast.  She always says it's an accident, but I think she's learning that her cast is an effective weapon as well.

The boys had a birthday party at a pool this weekend.  They had a lot of fun, and I made them stand for the obligatory photo.  This was the same cool pool they went to last year, which had a lazy river area.  They spent a lot of time circling around the river.  Josiah also made his way into the hot tub quite a number of times.  The boy loves his hot tubs.


While they were at the pool, Todd took the casted lady out to eat and they spent some time looking at the Home Store.  Caroline found her Christmas tree - a lovely rainbow tree.  They had a very nice time out together.  The kids are always so good one-on-one.

A Sling and a Gift

Caroline has received many a card and gift for her broken arm.  She has received lots of doll clothes (seriously one of her favorite things), Legos, stuffed animals, candy, and cash.  She has gotten a package or something nearly every day.  We have been humbled with the kindness of everyone and she is very grateful for it all.  With her arm feeling better every day, she's had a pretty good week.  She did have one rough day on Friday, but she was able to lay around all day to recuperate.

Earlier in the week, we went to the doctor's office to get her overcast put on.  Her cast had been cut down the side to allow for swelling, so now she had another layer of hard cast put over it.  She chose pink again, because they gave her options (lots of options!).  She did say that for her next cast, she's going to pick blue.  The tech also made her a very simple sling out of the cottony sleeve material with a little padding put inside to cushion her neck.  She has loved this sling and wears it all day every day.  It isn't hot like the other one and gives her a lot of freedom with her movement.

Now that she's recovering so well, we need to get her talking again.  She has turned silent when adults talk to her.  She looks at me and mouths complete sentences that are so long, I have no idea what she is saying.  It's been happening ever since she landed in the ER last week.

We also did two baths this week.  Not an easy feat with a full arm cast.  This nest was the reason for the first bath - a complete mess of the back of her head from all the lying down and using her head as leverage to move around on the couch.  Copious amounts of detangler was used. 

The kids started their activities at church this past week.  Caroline was finally old enough to go to God's Girls which is the girl version of Boys of Iron.  She really liked it and kept asking to go back, but then she always followed it up with, "But all we did was tell everyone our names."  Well, maybe you'll do more now that you know each other's names.  Henry enjoyed his class.  He has had the same leaders the past three years and he really likes them.  They've done something new with the 4th and 5th graders this year.  They're all together in a big room, and they're each assigned to a table.  Josiah wasn't keen on the idea at first, but he seemed to like the first day.  He definitely like the Domino's pizza that they got everyone.

The boys have had a harder week witnessing all the gifts and attention that has been showered upon Caroline.  I did ask Josiah if he wanted me to go out back and break his arm so he could get some gifts, too.  He declined.  In an attempt to show the boys that they were still loved, Todd and I took them out separately.  I took Josiah to McDonald's because he really wanted the NASA Snoopy toy that was in the Happy Meal.  After our delicious and nutritious meal, we walked around Walmart.  (This was one of those classy McDonald's that is inside of the Walmart.)  We looked at Halloween costumes.  Part of my purpose was to see if they had any costumes that Josiah could use for his Faces of History paper that he'll do in the spring.  Instead, Josiah was drawn immediately to his beloved Forky character from Toy Story 4.  I texted Todd, "Don't be mad at me."  And left it at that.

This afternoon, Todd and Henry went out for tacos and then stopped at Target to pick out a lamp.  He's been wanting a bedside lamp for his new room.  Todd said Henry picked out the silver lamp and the taupe shade by himself.  I asked if it was a manly lamp to which they said, "It's a lamp."  When I saw it in his room, I really liked it.  Very manly.  (Much more taupe looking in real life.)

While the boys have had a rough time with Caroline getting a lot of attention, tonight the tables were turned and Caroline cried a good long cry, because "I can't do anything."  The boys have two pool parties coming up and she could have gone to both, but won't be able to.  She can't go to playgrounds, she can't go to trampoline parks.  It's tough.  I told her the best thing was that she broke her left arm, not her right.  So she can still write, draw, and paint.  She painted some really good pictures this weekend.  It was a small consolation.

Surfer girl

Twins and an older sister

Google got me again with a Now and Then picture.

That was our week.  This week's character trait is thoroughness.  It may seem like a weird one, but it's important for them to do each job/school assignment/chore all the way.  Finish all their assignments for the week.  Clean up all their mess.  Put all their dishes in the sink.  Wipe off all the table.  There are so many ways that it can be applied.  I'm looking forward to a week of them applying it.  ;)

Monkey Bars: 1, Caroline: 0

Caroline's week started out well.  She got to wear her new sequined, glittery outfit from Grandma and Grandpa.  When she first saw it, she squealed, "I love Grandma and Grandpa.  They know me so well."  She loves her some sequins.

Caroline had also been crying a lot earlier in the week.  We bought Josiah a growing older/puberty book.  He's been reading it with Todd and, so far, they've only read the parts that talk about hygiene.  I bought Caroline's equivalent book at the same time just to have it on hand for the future.  She's asked about the book and how her body is going to change and she's been crying about it ever since.  I have kept it very G-rated (You'll get taller.  You'll have leg/underarm hair.).  One night before bed she was crying and saying how she liked birthdays because she likes presents and cake, but she doesn't want to get older.  These were genuine big, fat tears.  And it's not like I made the growing up process sound unpleasant, she's just not keen on the idea at all.  Usually these conversations devolve into how she doesn't know how to change a baby's diaper and how can she have a baby if she can't take care of it?  I told her I would help her learn how to do that, but it is always more tears.  We need to borrow a diaper from a friend with a baby so she can practice the technique on her dolls.  The poor girl.

CC went really well this week.  After CC some families meet back up at a playground just down the road.  We went last week and the kids wanted to go back again this week.  So we went.  A now much regretted decision.  The kids had been playing for a while, when all of a sudden, Caroline was on the ground screaming.  She got up and walked over to me, but it was clear that something was definitely wrong.  Her reaction was not the normal falling-down-I'm-in-pain reaction.  She was holding her arm and said she had fallen from the monkey bars.  We packed up our stuff and headed to the car, propping up Caroline's arm on a blanket to keep it cushioned.  Every bump and turn of the car elicited whimpers and cries from her seat.  We dropped the boys off at home with Todd and headed for the ER.  It is always the debate - ER or Urgent Care.  A quick google search showed that urgent cares don't cast arms, they only splint them and send you to an orthopedist.  That seemed like one too many steps if she had truly broken her arm, so we headed for Texas Children's.  As soon as we walked to the check-in desk, the nurse touched her arm all over, discovered the pain was in the elbow region and immediately got her a sling.  We went right into triage where the nurse showed Caroline a poster on the wall with the numbers 0 - 10 with faces over the numbers ranging from a smiley face to a crying face.  The nurse asked her which number was her pain.  Caroline looked at the poster for a long time, genuinely looking at it and trying to figure it out.  Then she answered the nurse with, "Does it only go up to 10?"  The nurse answered in the affirmative.  "Then a 10."  Oh the poor thing.  The nurse gave her some Motrin at that point and ordered an x-ray panel of her left arm.  Knowing the results now, it is amazing she didn't scream out in pain as they manipulated her arm to get the pictures they needed.  She had tears in her eyes and audibly said it hurt or "no, no, no," but she was still pretty calm all things considered.

After x-rays, we spent a fair amount of time in the waiting room, coloring pictures of Frozen's Elsa.  As long as the arm stayed still, she really seemed okay.  Then we were called back to a room so that the doctor could go over the x-ray results.  First she did a physical exam and touched her arm all over asking, "Does this hurt?  Does this hurt?" every inch down her arm.  Then she looked at me and said, "Well, her physical exam is pretty good, but it doesn't match the x-rays at all."  Oh no.  She broke her arm and she broke it badly.  There was a fracture going up the humerus, another one going down the radius, and three separate breaks in the distal head of the humerus - the little ball area near the elbow.  Not a clean break by any stretch of the imagination.  So then we got to wait for the surgical consult to come in and tell us how they were going to put her back together.  She was going to need pins to keep the bones in place and be in a cast for four weeks with the pins in, then several more weeks after the pins were out.  They splinted her arm to keep it from moving too much and took us to a room upstairs for the night.  At this point it was close to 10:30/10:45 p.m.  They had given Caroline morphine before they splinted her so that it would hurt less.  She was not a fan of morphine - it made her head hurt a lot for the first few minutes.  It also did not make her sleepy in the slightest.  So, at 11:00 p.m. in her room, after the nurses had all left, Caroline was lying in bed and talking to me for nearly an hour.  I was so, so tired.  I'm pretty sure I fell asleep before she did. I told her I wanted to take a picture of her in her splint for Todd and the boys to see. She smiled at first, but then said she shouldn't smile because it hurt, so she did a pained face!

My chatty roomie.

We were told that surgery would be first thing in the morning, which was great considering she couldn't eat or drink.  Now, when she had surgery two years ago, at a different hospital, they always had a group of doctors making their rounds at like 7:00/7:30 a.m.  So, to me, first thing in the morning was 7:00 a.m.   This hospital was not exactly on the same schedule.  The surgical PA came in at 9:30.  We got down to the pre-op area and waited another hour. At least it gave her time to do the TV down there.  She really liked the touchscreen and the games she could play on it.  She was very hungry all morning long.  She wanted Cheetos, a sub sandwich from Jersey Mike's, and pizza.

Her favorite TV.

The surgery itself lasted about an hour.  This surgery was a closed reduction, meaning they did not cut her open.  They used x-rays to see where to place the pins and set the bones that way.  The surgeon came out and told me it all went well and that she was in recovery.  He even gave me some pictures of her elbow both before and after the pins were in place.  Then he said it would be about ten minutes before they came to get me so I could see her.  Literally 59 minutes later they came to get me.  I was giving it one more minute before I asked what was taking so long.  When I did get to see her, they said she had been sleeping for a long time.  I think this may have been a function of my conversation with the anesthesiologist in pre-op.  I had mentioned that after her surgery two years ago, she woke up incredibly mad/agitated/inconsolable.  So much so that they gave her two morphine shots to try and calm her down.  (I remember very vividly that her four-year-old self was adamant that she wanted to walk to the bathroom by herself, which is frowned upon in the post-anesthesia wards.)  So this anesthesiologist may have upped the sedatives.  Not long after she woke up and drank some Gatorade, we were getting her dressed and getting discharged.


That evening, she did fairly well.  Though her arm hurt, she was eating and drinking.  She even got her Jersey Mike's sub for dinner and ate the whole thing.  After she finished it, she asked Todd for the other half.  Unfortunately for her, it was a kid's meal and there was no other half.  Bedtime was when things started to get rough.  She could not figure out how to get comfortable.  We had four pillows in her bed and blankets to help prop her body and arm up.  (We were told to keep it elevated.)  She finally fell asleep only to be awakened at 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning with her arm in a lot of pain.  I got her some medicine, but then she couldn't fall back asleep and half an hour later she was throwing it all up.  This was the trend for the rest of the morning.  She threw up five times in total - the maximum allowed before we had to call the doctor.  She took a mid-morning nap and a second long nap in the afternoon.  She woke up from that second nap as a totally different kid.  She was alert, happy, and ready to eat and drink.  She's been doing much better ever since.  Our CC director even stopped by and brought her a Barbie, which made her really happy that someone would do that.

Throughout the entire ordeal at the hospital, nearly every medical person we came in contact with said that monkey bars are the number one injury they see.  They cannot believe they still put them on playgrounds.  Lovely.  (#2 was trampoline injuries.)

Saturday evening, Josiah made a no-bake cheesecake all on his own. We were able to have some after dinner, but Josiah insisted that he cut the slices.  He cut mine first.  It was probably the smallest piece of cheesecake I have ever been served.  Todd was given his skimpy slice next.  Then Josiah cut his own slice, a significantly larger portion.  Caroline really wanted some, but knowing dairy isn't the best on a sensitive stomach, I only let her have a bite.  One bite.  She wasn't happy.  Meanwhile Henry was eating an ice cream cone.  Why?  Cheesecake is, and I quote, "too cheesy."   ↑ See the empty area?  That was my puny slice.

Not happy with a bite.

This morning the kids and I stayed home from church, but Caroline has been walking around a lot more.  She's going up and down the stairs and eating real meals.  She's not very happy about the cast still and says her arm feels cracked.  The cast is very heavy and she won't let it hang at all.  She either has the arm in a sling or she is holding the cast with her right hand.  Though she's nonweight-bearing with her left arm, she is allowed to let it be free.  It may be a while before she gets comfortable with that.  It is very heavy for her.  This week, we go back to the doctor's office to get it recasted.  Currently she has a cast on it, but they cut it in half to allow for swelling.  She'll get another cast put on top of her current one, which is going to be tough because that's just added weight!  She, of course, picked pink.  If they had a rainbow color, she would have totally gone for that. 

So, we'll be taking it easy this week and taking each day as it comes.  We will also never be getting on monkey bars ever again.